June 18, 2010

humiliating daily activities in my life volume 129836571

so i went to my first physical therapy session for the mystery tailbone pain the other day.

i've been to physical therapy before and am a HUGE believer in their practically magical ability to heal broken body parts, but i was a bit skeptical about how it was going to help me in this case. i mean, i don't appear to have any tendon or muscle issues; it's just this weird really painful area right on the bottom of my tailbone itself. but hey, i'm no doctor. maybe i did something weird to the muscle or tendon right on top of the bone! sure! let's give physical therapy a shot!

so i get there, and my physical therapist (who is also named alice!) has pretty much the same reaction as everyone else: huh. well. that's... weird. you sure you didn't fall?

(this was after an awkward conversation where i tried to explain what aerobic pole dancing entails to a 50ish year old woman who had clearly never heard of such a thing.)

after doing a diagnostic exam to check out the state of my body, make sure i didn't have some alignment problem contributing to the pain, etc., she concluded that:

a) my hips are really not flexible

b) one leg is 1cm shorter than the other

c) "it's no wonder" i'm not a runner "with those feet," and

d) none of these discoveries had any significant impact on my tailbone situation.

(although she did send me home with exercises for my hips / hamstrings, because apparently they're *that* bad.)

she told me she'd have to call some colleages and go back to her books to look up tailbone problems like mine, because it was so odd and rare. wheee. then she goes "as for therapy today.. i wonder if i should try electrical stimulation or ultrasound on you? hmm... let's see how ultrasound works."

me: ok. uh.. is it an ultrasound like.. you know.. for pregnant women...?

therapist alice: yes, same idea! it's sound waves, but without imaging, and at a higher frequency. it warms up the affected area and helps stimulate blood flow.

me: ok!

so i'm sure you guys are all familiar with where your tailbone is, but let me just remind you with this visual aid.and my injury appears to be WAY at the bottom of the tailbone. so, take a minute, and try to visualize exactly HOW applying an ultrasound wand to that area would work.

if you visualized something like this, you would be correct.that's me, facedown on the exam table, with my bare ass exposed and an ultrasound wand up in my bidness.

23 comments:

You poor thing! I'm so sorry to hear you had such a strange physical therapy session....if it makes you feel any better one of my legs is shorter than the other as well. Hope you have a nice weekend, I'll be in DC and will wave to you from Connecticut Ave! :)

Huh, weird. You'd think after all the pole classes you WOULD have flexible hips...I recently had a pilonoidal cyst burst right at the top of my ass crack...started with a really sore tailbone. But they usually affect hairy males aged 18-24...and I'm a 25 year old, not very hairy, GIRL. talk about embarrassing when I had to drop trou in the doctor's office :S

I had to have physical therapy on my arm/hand once when I had a bad bout of carpal tunnel. They hooked me up to those electric things and it felt like hundreds of ants crawling under my skin. Needless to say, I did not like it. But, I guess, it is better than having my ass hanging out while a PT rubs an ultrasound thingy on it.

I, um, wow. I love you. I had excruciating tailbone pain a few years ago (have I told you this already?) and I refused to go to the doctor because I was envisioning, well, exactly what you described. The pain just went away on its on, by the way. It took a long fucking time but one day I was able to stand up from my chair without gasping in pain.